The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

by Kurt Vonnegut

  Vincent was just passing through, as was usually the case. The heroics and poetics of his getting to the farm notwithstanding, he wasn’t staying very long. He was on his way to a farm in California, where some other people from Swarthmore had something beautiful going. Later we found out that whenever he was there he was on his way to where it was really at: in B.C. with us.

  Since he was just passing through and really wanting to get down to California, why had he bothered to stop by at all? We certainly weren’t on the way to anything but us. To get his dog, Tanga? To pick up some of his clothes or other stuff? When he left he didn’t take Tanga or any of his stuff. Maybe to check us out one more time, giving us one more chance to make whatever magic Vincent was searching for happen? For whatever reason, within an hour of his arrival Vincent decided and announced he was leaving.

  Virginia and I had been talking about taking a trip away from the farm for a while. The dreary weather had been getting to her. It was too wet and cold to do much outside and there wasn’t much that needed to be done inside. There were people she wanted to see here and there. What was happening with the revolution, women’s lib, the cities, America? She didn’t want to get out of tune. She said she was getting too ego-involved with the farm and wanted to see what would happen to it if she weren’t there. I had been feeling some of the same things. We had been talking about taking off for a month or so and coming back when there was more work to do on the place.

  When Vincent started talking about going to California it seemed to Virginia like the perfect chance for us to take our trip. The people at the commune Vincent was headed for had been friends of hers at Swarthmore. They were supporting themselves with pottery and trust funds. They had wheels, kilns, the whole bit. It was exactly what she had in mind.

  But if I was going to take a vacation I wanted to just head south and see whatever I saw, meet whoever I met, and let the winds and fates put whatever they would into my path. And if I was going to head for somewhere, I sure as hell didn’t want it to be another fucking Swarthmore enclave.

  I remembered Vincent’s talking about our trips from the East together after the trial. He had said he felt that Virginia and I were ganging up on him. I didn’t want that to happen again. I was pretty sure it was paranoia on his part, but real or not, it wasn’t the sort of thing I felt like dealing with again.

  The biggest thing was that I wanted Virginia to be on her own. She felt that she had been dependent on me for quite a while for direction, energy, decisions, etc., and she resented it. I wanted a commitment from her to the farm, to me, to a way of life. I didn’t want her thinking I was dragging her around. If she got away from me for a bit she might make the decision and feel it was hers. Also, I remembered what a bitch she could be to travel with.

  The next day we went down to the lake to see which boat and which motor we could get to work. The night before the water in the lake had dropped to such a point that Blue Marcel’s bow was on the ground and the stern had been pushed under water, submerging the Evinrude. We pulled it up and tried to get it going without much success. Dick, the old racing Merc 25, didn’t show much inclination to run either. The logical thing to do was to wait until someone came up to visit us and then go to town with the motor and bring it back. Feather was there, but I really didn’t want to run Feather until spring. She had an erratic engine at best, with a tricky cooling system that was a bitch to drain, which you had to do if there was any danger of freezing, which there was. But Vincent looked like he was going to piss in his pants if he didn’t get moving for California in the next few minutes. One way or the other I was persuaded to get Feather going. To this day I hold Vincent responsible for Feather’s death. I got the engine running in its sputtery old way and everybody was just about ready to get on board when the frost plugs blew. It was the beginning of the end for that beautiful old lapstrake that had been on the lake for over fifty years.

  The death of Feather didn’t faze our soulful wanderer in the least. He immediately set to work taking apart the Evinrude. “He’s going to kill all our engines,” I almost screamed, but I didn’t say anything. Eventually he got the Evinrude running and was roundly praised for his mechanical competence and ingenuity, which bugged me even more.

  Vincent wanted to head for town that night and I had to play the wet blanket, saying that it was getting dark and pointlessly dangerous. Bright and early the next morning Jack, Simon, Vincent, Virginia, and I set out. Simon was just going in to bring the boat back. Jack and I were going on to Vancouver to check out tractors and new fruit trees, and to get staple supplies. Virginia wanted me to come so that maybe I would change my mind and go with them to California.

  We spent the night in an abandoned cabin outside of town. Virge and I awoke to the sound of Vincent warming up the car. He was being very patient. We had little odds and ends of business to take care of in town and Vincent just sort of tapped his fingers, putting up with us with the endurance of a saint. He hardly said a word to anyone. The funny thing is no one ever called him on it. No one asked him why he was so anxious to get going, why he was in such a rush. He obviously didn’t have time to talk about it. He probably would have denied he was in any hurry or, more likely, just smiled sadly.

  The seed catalogues were in the mail, so on the ferries down to Vancouver Jack, Virginia, and I figured out what crazy things we’d try to grow. Peanuts? It was great fun. Vincent just paced.

  We stayed with Sankara, André, and Sy, three guys from Swarthmore who were more or less supporting themselves with a business called the Sunshine Movers. They had visited us at the farm a few months earlier and said we could stay at their Steven Street place whenever we were in Vancouver. It was the first time Virginia or I had been there, but Simon and Kathy and Jack had been there earlier.

  The Sunshine Movers were a funny crew. I hadn’t known them well at Swarthmore. They were in the class behind mine and were part of a vaguely intimidating gang of militantly apathetic cynics. They were into drugs but their kick was taking monster doses and not being affected by them. André was the only one I had ever managed to have a decent conversation with. Sankara seemed too cool to bother and Sy too bristly and hard. In any event, these were all just surface impressions and it was very nice to have a Vancouver base of operations again. Rosanne and Bert had moved on to Victoria.

  Somehow we managed to keep Vincent from leaving for California without stopping overnight in Vancouver. I had lots to say to Virginia and she had lots to say to me. We were reaching a new point in our relationship, getting to know each other again, even maybe falling freshly in love. But it was a bitch to try to talk or anything else with Vincent revving impatiently in the background. In spite of Vincent’s incessant, unspoken, single-minded racket we managed to get some good things said. She understood why I wasn’t going. I understood why she was.

  There was a sense of closeness between us. It felt so good that she almost decided not to go. But we realized that this was happening partly from our anticipation of being apart for a while, and our hopes of the good things that might come out of that.

  The next morning while Vincent warmed up the car we hugged and kissed good-by. When they left I felt a huge sense of relief that Vincent and his move move move was finally gone gone gone and I hadn’t blown up at him. I was looking forward to Virginia’s return and dwelling on the promise of fresh love that was in our parting.

  I had started to feel slightly nauseated when we first came down from the farm, but the morning Vincent and Virginia left, something was drastically wrong with my plumbing. The night before, Jack, our Vancouver friends, and I had gotten blown away on grass and developed a craving for ice cream. I went to the corner store and bought gallons of the stuff. I had a great time picking out flavors, staring at the carton, tasting it through the cardboard with my eyes. It took me quite a while and the man running the store was staring at me as hard as I was staring at the ice cream. In any event I ate an incredible amount of ice cream and the next morning my
stomach was dead. It just stopped working. I gulped down air and burped it up to try to figure out what the problem was. What came up smelled like no burp I had ever smelled before or ever heard of. I just wasn’t processing anything. Things were just putrefying in there. I tried to bring my stomach back to life with yogurt, vitamins, and intestinal flora pills, but nothing seemed to work. I swore off ice cream forever.

  After a few days Jack and I had done everything that was on our list and a few things that weren’t. We headed home.

  We went to the bar at Lund for lunch and had a few beers and some fish and chips. I gulped down some air and burped it back up. The putrid taste was going away. Beer and greasy fish and chips were succeeding where yogurt and vitamins had failed. After a few beers I decided to give Barnstable a call, collect of course, doing my bit to defuse the new family fortune before it could hurt anyone.

  The news wasn’t really news at all. I had expected it for quite a while. Dad had permanently moved out and had a new woman in New York. How fucking typical. I thought we were supposed to be a creative family. They assured me that they were fine and strong and I assured them that I was likewise. We all said love love love and hung up.

  Jack and I spent the night with the people at Prior Road. It was a pleasant evening, talking about farming, food, money, changes we were going through, possible cooperative ventures, creating closer ties between all the hip communities in the area. I remember a tall red-haired girl playing classical guitar and an ex-medical student stitching up a goat’s ear. Jack and I passed around some dope and fresh cabbage—scarce items, much appreciated.

  Then I lay back thinking about how everybody who came up to the farm usually spent a few days with the runs or stomach trouble. We guessed that maybe there was something in the water up there that some people’s systems couldn’t adjust to right away. But with me it was the other way. Every time I left the farm I seemed to get some sort of sickness. Maybe I had become addicted to something in the water or air up there and my stomach troubles when I left were withdrawal symptoms. I thought about Simon and how he talked about finding it harder and harder to function anywhere but the farm. The new life we were starting seemed to entail an unforeseen side effect, a fairly disturbing one: an inability to function in any other context.

  I didn’t get very far thinking about all this. My mind kept getting caught up in the same circles round and round. Everyone else was sound asleep.

  The next day Jack and I borrowed John Eastman’s boat, loaded into it the various goodies we had picked up in Vancouver, and headed up the lake. It was a nice clear day, the lake was smooth. My stomach felt almost normal.

  Simon, Kathy, and Zeke gave us a joyous hugging welcome. There was still snow on the ground but it was melting away. It was only January but there was a definite hint of spring in the air.

  The worst of winter was over and we had made it in good health and spirits. Life on the farm would get cushier and cushier. In a little while we could plant crops. The seeds were ordered and on the way. Our expenses would drop to nothing, and we still had a healthy cash reserve. We were home free, not a cloud on the horizon. I got out my trusty horn and played and played. It was like magic. I felt so good I almost started to cry. Home at last.

  EDEN. The next morning I was up at the crack of dawn. My stomach felt great, the weather was even warmer than the day before, the sky was an almost summer blue without a cloud anywhere. January? What had been a hint of spring was now overpowering. I fetched some water from the stream and then ambled around our idyllic home waiting for the others to get up and share this gorgeous gorgeous day.

  It was really Eden, there was no other way to describe it. Our crazy gamble had paid off. I remembered all the things various people had said about how difficult if not impossible our dreams were. I couldn’t help laughing. I had really done what I set out to do, and it had been so easy. In a way I almost wished it had been harder. I wouldn’t have minded putting in ten or fifteen really bitchy hard years to feel this good. I had fully expected to and it would have been nice to feel I had really earned it. But it felt so good that earned, begged, or stolen didn’t really matter much.

  It took forever for the others to get their sleepy selves moving. And when they finally trundled down they hardly seemed to notice what a wonderful day it was. Just to make sure they didn’t miss it altogether, I suggested that it was a fine day to drop a little mescaline. Everyone was game. Down went the little pills. I was fully confident that this trip would be as glorious as my first mescaline trip was horrendous. I was right.

  After a big mug of coffee made in our new super-see-through Pyrex glass percolator and seasoned with goat’s milk and honey, I went up to the roof, took my clothes off, and lay in the sun. It was the first time in many wet, cold months that that had been remotely possible. Jack came up and joined me.

  We were lying there in a timeless state of peace and contentment when the sound of uncontrollable laughter came from below. I crawled to the edge of the roof. The scene I looked down on was a vision of heaven and peace on earth, harmony-between-all-things. Simon had baked up a batch of crackers and brought them out just as Kathy finished milking the goats. Simon and Kathy were laughing so hard they were crying as they fed crackers to the two nanny goats and the kids. The goats couldn’t get enough; they were prancing around kicking their heels in the air. Zeke was watching the scene, wagging his tail in approval and getting an occasional cracker himself. They were all falling in a big heap of joyous people, goats, and dogs. Spring was definitely coming.

  I climbed down, put on my tennis shoes and wrapped a blanket around myself, and went out to join them. Simon and Kathy saw me in my blanket and tennis shoes and started laughing even harder.

  “Tennis shoes and a blanket, it’s all I need. I can go anywhere,” I said by way of explanation. Jack came down and we all lazed around on the ground talking about the sun and weather and laughing harder and harder all the time. We looked around at the fields, the mountains, the trees, the house. “This is Eden,” I said. Nobody disagreed.

  I turned to Kathy and asked, “Is there a struggle going on?”

  “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

  “It’s just that I was wondering why people work at shitty jobs, live in ugly places, hate each other, have wars, etc. It really doesn’t make much sense.”

  “It does seem a little silly,” she said.

  “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Kathy said after a while.

  “There’s no reason why it has to be just today,” I said. “If we want it to, life can be like this even if it rains or snows. It’s all up to us. This is our God-given birthright. I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let go of it.”

  “I was wondering when this would really go somewhere,” Simon.

  No doubt about it, looking around at the farm, at the people, at everything. It had really finally gone somewhere.

  Kathy and Simon and I were crying and laughing for joy. It had really happened. Everything confirmed it. We were dumbfounded with joy. Jack was holding back some. I felt sorry for him, but he’d catch on.

  “Did you ever think it would ever really happen?”

  “I damn near chucked it many times.”

  “Did you ever really doubt that it had to happen sooner or later?”

  “What I wonder is why it took so long. Why now? What was stopping us before?”

  “You know there’s no going back now.”

  “About time. Life finally makes some sense.”

  “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” “Thank God we didn’t give up.” “Thank God we persevered.” Everything that had happened before was like some bad dream, something that we could finally look at clearly now that we were out of it. “How the hell did we put up with it as long and as well as we did?”

  It was truly a magic day and a magic trip, but the next day brought cooler air, with the usual total overcast and sprinkles of rain. The next day it snowed. Simon, Jack, and Kathy ha
d come down some, but I was still a touch or so higher than I had been before the mescaline. I didn’t see what was to be gained by going back to my pre-Eden days. I was having a swell time and feeling a little sorry for the others, having their Eden depend on some silly pill.

  If only Virginia could be here now, so I could share this incredible sense of well-being and saying by-by to all the shit in my life.

  I had somehow conquered the evil little troll inside me that had given me so much shit and kept me from happiness. I had finally beat all the little shithead fears about myself. Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells.

  Everything that had ever happened to me made perfect sense. I was sore at absolutely no one and nothing. Everything that had happened had happened just right. But where to go from here? As much as it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive, as much as I believed that and had lived by it, once you’ve arrived, you’ve arrived, and there’s not much to be done about it.

  I had thought about becoming a minister because there would be no way my job would ever be finished. As long as there was one unkind thought in my congregation, one unjust deed in my community, one unhappy person, the Indelibly Reverend Vonnegut would have his hands full. I loved Virginia because there was clearly so much wrong with our relationship, so much to improve that the prospect of arrival was an incredibly long shot.